None of your business?

Tuesday’s election presents no big state or national contests, and the raft of state constitutional changes, important as they are, may hold no great interest for you. But there is still a compelling reason to show up at the polls: To remind politicians that this is your government, and you’re watching.
You don’t have to look any further than right here in the Capital Region for examples of how those in government tend to forget who works for whom.
We got a stark example of it two weeks ago from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Moreland Commission. The Times Union’s James M. Odato asked how the commission, whose mission is to look into public corruption, will function if — or quite likely when — its co-chairs run into conflicts of interest. Those conflicts are bound to occur as the commission goes looking for information on the clients of law firms that employ state legislators.
Most lawmakers who are legislators don’t want to divulge that information, citing attorney-client privilege. So the commission has decided to pry it from them through subpoenas.
But it takes a unanimous vote of the commission’s three co-chairs to approve the issuance of a subpoena. And at least two of the co-chairs may have to recuse themselves from voting on at least some subpoenas. As Mr. Odato reported, both Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick have received contributions from law firms connected to state lawmakers.
So where does this leave the commission? Will recusals prevent unanimous votes and block the issuance of subpoenas to politically connected firms? Or will the one commission co-chair who doesn’t hold elected office end up being in sole control of who gets investigated, and who doesn’t? “We’re not going to get into specifics about operations, investigations or subpoenas,” was the answer from Michelle Duffy, the commission’s press officer.
Translation: “None of your business.”
It’s an all too familiar answer from government these days, whether it’s a state official refusing to answer a fundamental question about government operations, or a town board in Malta mysteriously pulling a potentially embarrassing ethics report off the public agenda just before Election Day, or the Capital Region Planning Commission refusing to release a pending $136 million plan to reduce sewage in the Hudson River while discussing it with state officials.
This isn’t national security we’re talking about here. It’s the kind of information the public is entitled to know.
Imagine how a boss would react if an employee suggested that what they were up to on company time was none of the boss’s business. At the very least, the employer would remind the employee who’s boss.
Tuesday is Election Day. It’s a good day to remind government, from town hall to the state Capitol, who’s in charge. The first step in doing that is to vote.